To our readers

"Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end."

That, at least, is what Oscar Wilde said, and as the semester draws to a close and final exams loom on the horizon, it's hard for students--and probably many professors--not to sympathize with the feeling expressed by Mr. Wilde.

Then reality returns, and I admit reluctantly that exams really do have a legitimate academic purpose--providing that oft-needed extra incentive to get one's act together and learn the material. You might even say, if you didn't mind completely divorcing a Socrates quotation from its proper context, that "the unexamined life is not worth living"--although that's going a bit further than I'm willing to.

Regardless, it's hardly fair for the University to examine its students every semester if we never get to examine it back. So it is in that spirit that we present the final issue of TowerView this semester--an issue in which we attempt to focus the lens of examination squarely on the University.

In the pages that follow, you can read about the increasing commercialization of academic research and whether it's good for science; the scarcity of black coaches for sports teams at Duke; the career trajectory planned by the future Richard Nixons and Elizabeth Doles who are at the University now; and the question of whether the University has the responsibility--or the ability--to produce ethical graduates as it sends them into a business world that too often seems lacking in ethics. Then, widening the field of focus slightly to include the nearby Trinity Park neighborhood, we also take a look at an intriguing if troubling problem of race, education and collective action.

So whether you're a devotee of ancient Greek philosophers, Irish playwrights, both or neither, I hope this issue of TowerView gives you something to take your mind off exams, occupy it during reading period, and maybe even stretch its horizons a little bit.